The Egyptian authorities held the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, and another senior official of the organization, Sarah Leah Whitson, at Cairo Airport and denied them entry for “security reasons.”
They were arriving to announce a report on what the organization considered mass killings committed by Egyptian security forces after Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew former President Mohamed Morsy in July 2013.
Human Rights Watch and other Egyptian and international rights groups have been criticizing the suppression of freedoms in Egypt since the overthrow of Morsy.
Whitson tweeted that she was held at Cairo Airport for 12 hours before she was deported, which the author of the report, Omar Shaker, confirmed to Reuters.
He said the report, which took a year of investigation, was submitted to the Egyptian authorities who said they would comment on it once it is announced.
They also did not comment on the deportation incident.
The Egyptian government had earlier said that it is fighting terrorism and that it does not differentiate between the thousands of Islamists who were detained and the insurgents who are attacking military targets in Sinai.
